


Edelscheisse

by Island_of_Reil



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Crack, Gen, Modern Art, Not Safe For Lunch, Shit, Spoilers for chapter 63
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-21
Updated: 2016-06-21
Packaged: 2018-07-16 12:13:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,110
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7267678
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Island_of_Reil/pseuds/Island_of_Reil
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Erwin and Levi attend a gallery opening of Zackley’s art.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Edelscheisse

**Author's Note:**

> I read way too much about [this guy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piero_Manzoni) for this fic.

“Why the fuck are we here again?” Levi muttered, adjusting his cravat and looking warily around at the crowd in the gallery. His voice was just loud enough that a couple of young women, dressed to the nines, turned their heads in his direction with their finely plucked brows raised.

“I told you, Levi,” Erwin said, his face carefully composed. “We’re here to see the Generalisimo’s art. And keep your voice down a little more, please.”

“His ‘art’?” Levi repeated, dropping his volume without missing a beat. “If I wanted to see fat hairy guys in nothing but frilly socks and high heels, I can think of a few bars in Lower Sina I could’ve gone to. The company would’ve been better, too.”

“Canapés, gentlemen?” a teenage girl in a servant’s outfit chirped, appearing before them with a silver tray that sparkled under small napkins laden with tiny hors d’oeuvres. She apparently didn’t recognize either of them out of uniform.

“Thank you, miss,” Erwin said graciously. He lifted two canapés off the tray by their napkins and handed one to Levi.

“Thanks,” Levi said expressionlessly to the girl as he took the food from Erwin. She beamed as if she’d been given the most lavish compliment of her life, then darted toward a small group of men nearby.

Levi bit into his canapé, lifted his brows, and finished his bite. “This shit’s pretty good,” he said. Erwin went a little green. “If you’ll pardon the expression,” Levi added, unable to keep a faint, mean glee out of his addendum. Erwin chose to ignore it.

Suddenly the gallery space was filled with the repeated tinkle of a spoon against a vineglass. “Your attention, please!” a familiar booming voice came from the darkened podium at the front of the room. Conversation died down, candelabra throughout the room were snuffed, and three servants on each side of the podium whipped covers of black silk off the lightstones they carried. Front and center stood Generalisimo Darius Zackley, beaming proudly. Behind him was a table on which, under a heavy black cloth, stood something three-dimensional and vaguely triangular.

“I’m very glad all of you could join me tonight here,” he said. “First, and foremost, I would like to thank Her Majesty, Queen Historia Reiss, for her gracious patronage.” Historia, seated against the wall near the front in robes of office and flanked by armed guards, gave a single solemn nod that made her crown look like it was weighing her head down. Her expression, Levi thought, was that of someone who would rather have been combing lice out of orphans’ hair this evening. He couldn’t say he blamed her.

“Next, I’d like to thank Lord Erkenbert,” Zackley continued, “a loyal ally of humanity, for helping to organize this event.” At the center of the crowd, a tall, ruddy man in well-tailored clothes nodded his headful of flyaway white hair. “As well as the curator and staff of the Mitras Gallery of Fine Arts for their exceedingly capable assistance.

“And, finally, the event would not have been possible without the individual contributions of all three Commanders of our military legions” — here Zackley gestured toward different sections of the room — “Nile Dawk of the Military Police, Dot Pixis of the Garrison, and, perhaps more than anyone else, Erwin Smith of the Survey Corps.”

There was a polite smattering of applause. A few people who recognized Erwin looked his way, and he exchanged polite nods and smiles with them. By contrast, they gave Levi covert looks that ranged from open admiration to nervousness. But most of the attendees didn’t seem to recognize either of them, and Levi doubted they knew Dawk or Pixis by sight, either. Their clothes shouted “more money than taste,” and they looked like they’d rather have been at a tavern or gaming parlor. Once again, he found himself in sympathy.

“And now,” Zackley intoned, “I invite you to take humanity’s first-ever look at … my art.” And, with a flourish, he whipped the black cloth off the object on the table.

“Oooooh,” about half of the crowd murmured.

“Hmmmm,” the other rough half of the crowd mused.

“What the fuck?” Levi said in an undertone to Erwin.

On the table were something like a hundred small cans, the kind that potted meat went into. How Zackley yanking the cloth away hadn’t sent them all clattering to the floor, Levi had no idea. And pinned up on the wall behind the stack was what looked like a label from one of the cans, but greatly enlarged:

> _Edelscheisse_  
>  Contents 30 gr net  
>  Freshly preserved  
>  Produced and tinned  
>  in summer 850 

“Oh. My,” Erwin said in the same undertone to Levi.

“Before you,” Zackley declared, “you see ninety cans of noblemen’s feces. This was a great sacrifice on my part, as that meant ninety fewer cans that could have been used to feed our disgraced nobles.” Maybe three or four people away, Levi could hear someone retch quietly before stifling it. In the opposite direction he could catch the sound of someone else spitting into a napkin.

“However! I believe it well worth the sacrifice. The contents of the cans symbolize the defecation of the disloyal nobles onto humanity. By trapping it within these containers of steel, as well as by routing it back into the digestive tracts whence it came, I have contained their polluting influence on all of us.

“But also, my dear guests, note the primality of the medium in which I work. Paint? Charcoal pencil? Clay? Bah! These are the tools of lesser artists. I work in one of the most intimate of media: shit, dried naturally in the sun, canned without preservatives. What better metaphor for an artist’s labor could there be? Other than the steel of the cans and the paper of their labels, my art is pure raw material, and its violent expulsion from the intestines of the nobles represents the violence with which they stamped their expensive boots on the face of humanity, forever — or so they thought.”

“Yeaaaahhh, I think I’ve had enough,” Levi said, just above an undertone now, though it was mostly lost in the applause around him. He folded his napkin carefully so that the food stain was on the inside, then stuffed it into Erwin’s nearest pocket. “I’m outta here.”

“Wait — where are you going?” Erwin hissed.

“One of those bars in Lower Sina I told you about,” Levi said as he started out for the rear door. “At least the scat freaks there don’t give grandiose speeches about what they like to do with other people’s shit, and two of them owe me drinks.”


End file.
